


One Month Late

by bumtickley



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Another Episode, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Despair (Dangan Ronpa), Anger, Crushes, Dead Enoshima Junko, Denial, Depression, Emotional Constipation, Enoshima Junko Being An Asshole, F/M, Love, Marriage Proposal, Mukuro cannot into feelings, Naegi Makoto is a Cinnamon Roll, Racism, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Unrequited Crush, self-indulgent bullshit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-18
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2020-09-08 03:55:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20302408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bumtickley/pseuds/bumtickley
Summary: Mukuro Ikusaba's family dies a month before her contract ends and it nearly breaks her... but in retrospect, she thinks she prefers it this way.





	One Month Late

–

Mukuro Ikusaba is six years old the first time she wakes up cold in an alleyway. She knows it won’t be the last, what with her father having becoming jobless and shortly after their entire family becoming homeless. Junko is halfway between miserable and ecstatic; miserable because of how much she hates being homeless but ecstatic because she’s not alone in the despair. Mukuro doesn’t really get it – she never really has – but she swears to herself that she’ll keep Junko safe. It’s her duty, after all, as the bigger sister, and she’d do anything for Junko.

–

Mukuro Ikusaba is seven when by pure chance her father meets a rich drinking buddy who happens to take an interest in his situation… and offers him a well-paid job under him when he finds out his family’s situation. They’re off the street in a week and Mukuro can’t help but feel her spirits lift at that. Junko slaps her and lectures her the first moment the two are alone, complaining about her feeling any kind of hope. After all, she’s a twin of despair, right? She learned to try to hide her elation a little after that, not that it did much against a twin who could tell what she was feeling at a glance...

–

Mukuro Ikusaba is ten when her elementary school hosts a survival game tournament and she ends up winning thanks to the hundreds of little tricks she had learned from her year on the street. Somehow, she’s recruited to write for a military magazine despite being a literal elementary schooler and she excitedly tells her dad, who finds the experience kind of confusing as well but orders their entire backlog of magazines for her to get to grips with what she’ll need to do.

She partially lives for those magazines for the next two years. Had it not been for Junko demanding most of her attention, in retrospect she suspects that’s the only thing she would have lived for.

– 

Mukuro Ikusaba is twelve when her family flies off to France to start their tour of Europe, and still twelve when Mukuro runs off while they’re in Paris to prove to herself that she can hack it with the best of them on the battlefield, if given the chance, the first time she’s ever done anything of her own initiative.

She hunts down the Fenrir recruiter she knows is in the city, and when he laughs off her plea to join them and tells his bodyguard to throw the little “chink” out, her entire body floods with fury at the thought of this being a complete waste of time and being turned down because of _racism_, of all things. She leaps forward and delivers an uppercut to his bodyguard’s chin so hard he’s spitting teeth about half a second before he drops unconscious and she pickpockets his knife from him before he hits the ground. Before the recruiter even realizes that there’s a problem, he’s got a knife to his neck.

She swells with pride at the knowledge that she _did it_ when she’s in a Fenrir-owned tattoo parlor a day later, and within the week she’s shipped off to Afghanistan with a lucrative three year contract… with a falsified age on her dossier, of course.

– 

Mukuro Ikusaba is fifteen when she emerges from the horrors of war unscathed, at least physically, and with no further contract, heads back to Japan, eager to prove to her sister that... that… (_“Oh, so you’re not just a useless, fat, smelly, dumb pig after all, __you’re a useless, fat, smelly, dumb pig who can shoot a gun__! That __**totally**__ justifies you running off on your own for three years instead of __staying here and __helping me!”__)_ She’s on the airplane home and can already hear Junko’s voice in her head and figures she knows exactly what she’ll say. Then again, maybe she’d take a different approach just to drink in her despair over figuring her wrong. Junko is difficult like that, and truth be told, Mukuro has never fully understood her nor her obsession with despair.

–

Mukuro Ikusaba is still fifteen when she knocks on her family’s door only for an unfamiliar woman to open the door, confused as to why a complete stranger is bothering her. When she asks for Junko Enoshima and explains that she’s her twin sister, the woman’s face turns a shade more downcast into a look she _recognizes_, and within an instant Mukuro’s stomach fills with ice. _That’s the look of a medic who has to explain to a soldier that his brother just flatlined._

“The whole family died in a car crash last month,” the woman says. Mukuro’s hearing whites out and she doesn’t even hear the rest of what she’s saying, not that it would have mattered to her anyway, because she _didn’t believe it_.

She ignores the woman’s shouts and protestations as she runs off to the nearest library to look through their newspaper archive, and surely enough, she digs out a newspaper from last month with a headline that causes her stomach to fill with ice again.

‘**Model Junko Enoshima, 15, ****And Family ****Die In Vehicle Accident’**

She digs her fingernails into her palm hard enough to draw blood, and yet this _ isn’t g__ood enough _ for her, she knows very well that Junko could have set this up just to make her despair and might be alive somewhere. She leaves the newspaper where it is and flies out of the library to hunt down the one person who might know more about what happened… her father’s drinking buddy and employer.

He had too many assets in one place for him to have moved very far, Mukuro figured, and surely enough, the man is still living in the exact same place he had been when she left Japan. 

When she knocks on his door and he first catches sight of her, the man’s eyes go wide in shock and he clutches his chest like he’d been shot before slumping over against the doorframe, using it to support him. “Mukuro?!”

“Yes, that’s me,” she replies, careful to keep any hints of her mental state out of her voice. ‘_Junko wouldn’t tolerate me being so open,’ _she thought.

“We all thought you’d been kidnapped!”

Mukuro almost replies with the truth, but she figures telling him _ no, actually, I just ran off to join a mercenary group without warning _ wouldn’t go over very well, so instead she lies. “I was,” she states rather flatly. “I made my escape earlier this week. But that’s not why I’m here.” 

“I figured,” he said, and adopted a tone much like her father’s. “Listen, Mukuro... I’m sorry. You’re… you have to know, they’re all-”

Mukuro cuts straight to the chase. “I want to know where they were buried,” she demands. If Junko let herself be buried, she knew there was the slightest chance it might be another one of her tricks, she might be alive, and she could put all of this -

“Buried?” he asks incredulously, cutting off her train of thought. “Mukuro, I cremated all three of them personally.”

Her hand flies to her mouth and a sob escapes her before she can clamp down on her roiling emotions._ ‘__Don’t lose control,’_ she pleads with herself, falling back on how she’d detach herself from everything while in Fenrir. She doesn’t want to hear anything more and flees – to where, she doesn’t even know herself. 

By the end of the day, she’s checking herself into a seedy hotel, keeping her emotions composed. ‘_ I think I can deal with this… I just have to _ _ stay in control _ _ ,’ _ she thinks. ‘ _ You can do this, Mukuro. _’ 

Her composure melts into nothing the instant she’s inside her room and before she can even_ think or try to collect herself_ she’s thrown herself into the bed with enough force to crack the bedframe. She’s screaming, raging, sobbing, punching everything in sight, tearing at her own skin and hair, and she doesn’t even _care_, because _what does this matter I just lost the only thing that actually matters –_ _I’m so sorry I’m the worst big sister ever I failed you Junko I’m-_

She runs out of energy three hours into her tantrum and falls asleep. She dreams of nothing but Junko insulting her, and despite herself her stomach feels warm and fuzzy and her heart pounds - 

...and then she wakes up, and she feels nothing but a deep, all-consuming emptiness. She can barely make herself out through the shattered mirror, and with all of the cuts and tears on her body – self-inflicted, she knows, because even if she didn't remember nobody but herself could hurt her if she didn’t want them to – she immediately thinks _ there’s no way I’d pass muster at Fenrir like this, _ and she immediately knows what she needs to do.

Forget Japan and throw herself back into Fenrir. There is nothing left for her here. _ ‘ _ _ I’d probably be a better soldier like this, anyway,’ _she thinks.

She enters the hotel lobby and throws down five hundred thousand yen on the counter to pay for the damage before leaving without saying a word. It was the least she could do for putting them through Typhoon Ikusaba, she thinks, and while she doesn’t care at the moment, she knows that there’s a slight chance that might not always be the case, and she’s smart enough to head off a potential Yakuza problem before it can become one. 

When she goes to the library again and searches Fenrir mercenary group on one of their computers, the only reason she isn’t Typhoon Ikusaba again is because she’s too numb.

The first result was _ Private Military Contractor group Fenrir shut down after- _

She doesn’t bother looking further into it and leaves. It doesn’t matter, and even looking at the tattoo on the back of her hand doesn’t make her feel anything. When she reaches the sidewalk, she briefly considers throwing herself in front of a truck – it’d be one way to be reunited with her sister – but she can’t even muster the energy to do that and in the end the thought holds no real appeal to her, anyway. 

She’s in and out of different hotels for the next week before she decides on a new plan.

She wants to learn as much about her sister as she could so she would at least know what she missed out on.

–

For the next month Mukuro Ikusaba is poring through interview after interview, and she’s amazed at how all of these idiots writing these columns consistently get her _ wrong _ . She almost grabs a pen and starts writing an angry letter to these assholes rebuking them for _ daring _ to claim they know anything about her, but she stops herself when she realizes… why would any of them care about a trendsetter who’s been dead for two months?

Eventually, she’s gone through all of them, and she can think of only one more option…

...her classmates.

She enrolls herself in the same middle school Junko went to, and surely enough, the kids who claimed to know Junko didn’t actually know Junko at all… although they were at least closer to getting her right than the magazines ever were.

She doesn’t tell them that she’s her twin sister. Nobody needs to know that, and she has no desire to have that wound reopened yet.

And then one day, the girl that called herself the closest to Junko confides in Mukuro that she had once been told something specific because her parents would take overseas trips.

**“_If you ever go to Europe and see a useless, fat, smelly, dumb pig of a Japanese girl anywhere, you tell her to haul her ass back to Japan because her little sis misses her!”_**

Mukuro thought she was numb for good, but it took everything she had to stop herself from bursting into tears on the spot. 

– 

Mukuro Ikusaba is sixteen when she gets into Gunma Prefectural Shibutani High School, and two days into her career as a high school student she’s headhunted by a strange man with a fedora who introduces himself as a talent scout for Hope’s Peak Academy.

“You’re a pretty good soldier, huh?” he says, and Mukuro almost drops her guard.

“How did you-”

He taps the back of his right hand.

Mukuro narrows her eyes at him, almost daring him to say more.

“So, you interested?”

After a brief explanation that Hope’s Peak is intended to cultivate talents and isn’t just a slightly more upscale high school, she says yes; she’s certainly more interested in sharpening her skills as a soldier than she is sitting around doing math or attempting to learn more English. 

– 

Mukuro Ikusaba is still sixteen when she attends the Hope’s Peak entrance ceremony. She studies the crowd before the headmaster’s speech can begin… and when her eyes make contact with a small, brown-haired boy, he_ smiles _ at her so warmly an d _ suddenly her heart feels like it’s been seized in a vice-grip and her stomach is doing flips and- _

...clearly he noticed her distress because he’s running straight for her while her hand is clutched to her chest. “Hey, is something wrong?!” he says, and his voice is so full of genuine concern that it takes Mukuro by surprise. 

She squeaks out a simple “No, I’m fine.”

“You didn’t look it! I thought you were having a heart att-”

“I would have known if I was, trust me,” Mukuro says as she waves him off. “Ultimate Soldier, remember?” she says, repeating the same title Kizakura had given her.

“Oh, uh, um, no, actually. I looked up my classmates before I got here, but I couldn’t find much about you.” Then he rather adorably snaps to attention in front of her. “Uh, sorry, I forgot. I’m Makoto Naegi, the Ultimate Lucky Student. I… um...”

“How do you measure luck?” asks Mukuro, confused.

“I wish I knew because then maybe I’d know why it’s so terrible,” he quips back, and Mukuro bites back a laugh. 

“So how did they know you were a lucky student?” she continues on with the questions.

“I, uh… won a lottery...” he states, flushing. “It feels kind of lame, being in the presence of a bunch of people I obviously don’t belong with because of something as dumb as that...”

“I think you belong,” Mukuro says, and the boy lights up like a Christmas tree, causing her _heart to feel like it’s seizing up-_

“Really?” he asks, staring up at her with puppy dog eyes.

“Yes,” Mukuro says. “Being lucky is certainly a better talent to have than being able to kill people better than anyone else.”

“I… guess you have a point there,” he laughs, and the sound is like music to Mukuro’s ears.

Mukuro genuinely smiles for the first time in several years, and she opens her mouth to say more to him, but-

“QUIET! The Headmaster is beginning!” yells a boy she recognized as Kiyotaka Ishimaru, the Ultimate Moral Compass, and rather than get into a fight over it, she simply holds her tongue.

“I’ll talk to you later, okay,” Naegi whispers to her, before smiling and giving her a quick wave goodbye.

Mukuro barely even pays attention to the Headmaster’s speech; she doesn’t actually care, and she certainly can’t focus on that while she was busy figuring out what the hell she just went through. It’s only later that she remembers she never told Makoto her name.

–

Mukuro Ikusaba is still sixteen when she figures out she has a massive crush on Makoto Naegi and doesn’t have a single clue what to do about it. _ ‘Junko would know what to do,’ _ she thinks, _ ‘but I’m not sure she’d tell me. _’ Her heart throbs painfully at the thought of her sister, but at this point that’s a reminder that she’s still alive and able to feel, and that is a huge improvement over being emotionally numb.

Mukuro Ikusaba is also still sixteen for a number of other things:

For when the school faculty and the students find out that the serial killer Genocide Jack is actually Genocide _ Jill _and one of their students to boot, and when she calls Naegi adorable and threatens to slice him to ribbons in front of Mukuro. It took everything she had to not attempt to kill the serial killer on the spot, and instead she threatened to blow the whistle on her if she so much as harmed a hair on Naegi’s head, which seemed to calm her down.

For when the biker gang leader Mondo accidentally works himself into a rage near little Naegi and nearly punches him out, only for her to intercede and knock the biker out herself before he gets close. She at least apologizes for that one, since she understands how emotions can get out of control, but warns him to never ever _ ever _ do that again. To his credit, he does a good job of keeping himself under control from that point on.

For when Naegi gets into a verbal fight with Byakuya Togami over something trivial and the rich heir fights back by attacking his station, his lack of manners, and his gentle demeanor. Every single insult makes Mukuro’s heart feel like it’s being stabbed, and eventually, she can’t take it anymore; she gives Byakuya two black eyes after yelling at him to shut the fuck up. She considers it worth the suspension long after the fact, and Byakuya never insults Makoto again.

For when she realizes that Naegi has eyes for the idol in their class who he went to middle school with, and the flames of jealousy seep into her heart. Her doubts and inability to explain herself to Naegi make her think of a world where he doesn’t even look at her anymore, and she cries herself to sleep for the first two nights afterward.

And finally, for when two months later, she exits the building for some nighttime outdoor running and finds Naegi alone, crying softly, and she immediately looks around to find who did this to him so she can make them _ pay. _ And with no culprit in sight, she has no choice but to investigate the matter herself.

“Makoto…?” she asks softly, deliberately cooling down the flames burning in her heart. “What happened?”

“...You’re going to think this is stupid, but-”

“I never think anything you do is stupid,” she says matter-of-factly, and he laughs.

“Well be prepared, because this is so _dumb_ and _selfish_… Leon and Sayaka started dating, and I feel like shit because I didn’t feel happy for them at all, I just felt… miserable inside, so I came out here to clear my head and just-”

“You had a crush on her,” she states flatly, deliberately keeping her tone neutral, before seating herself right next to the crying boy. “...I understand. That isn’t stupid.”  
  
“...Yeah… Yeah, you got me in one. Thanks, Ikusaba-san,” he says, sniffling slightly but starting to smile nonetheless.

“Just call me Mukuro,” she says.

The boy laughs and her stomach lights up with butterflies again. “Haha… yeah, I will. Um… I never thanked you for protecting me, did I?

“No,” she states flatly. “You being here is all the thanks I need,” and those words cause the boy’s face to flush deep red. “...Sorry, I don’t mean it that-”

“It’s okay, Iku-” he stops himself, “Mukuro. I get what you mean, I think...”

They sit there for a couple of minutes, silent, before Mukuro breaks the silence with a question out of the blue. “...Makoto, can… can you explain what it feels like to have a crush to me?” she asks of him, her resolve barely getting her through the question, and although she thinks she already knows she’d like some outside confirmation. Just to be sure, she assures herself.

“Huh? Umm… I’m not an expert, but I guess… It was sort of like… I felt like someone lit a fire in my chest whenever she’d glance at me, and I just felt so overwhelmingly **happy** to be around her, and-”

“It’s hard to imagine you happier than you usually are,” Mukuro says.

He flushes and casts his gaze downward. “Thanks, Mukuro. But… it wasn’t always great, sometimes I’d feel sick to my stomach and dizzy over it because I’d start thinking about how it wouldn’t work out, which is why I was here I was trying to get some fresh air and-”

“I know what that feels like,” Mukuro says, and before she can even think about what she’s doing she grabs the smaller boy in a hug.

“...Mukuro?” he asks, confusion clear in his voice, and then the clarity of the situation hits him, and he hugs her back with all of his might.

Which isn’t a whole lot. He’s really not very strong, Mukuro muses, but she thinks she likes him better that way.

“I… I guess this is just hard for me to believe, because it’s so hard to believe anyone would crush on me,” Makoto says, and she squeezes him tighter in response.

“When you smiled at me in the gymnasium, before the headmaster’s speech? That was the first time any boy ever smiled at me,” she says, flushing deeply.

“What, really?!” Makoto all but yells in surprise, with the tiniest hint of anger in his voice. Mukuro finds she likes him being a little angry on her behalf. “How could anyone **not** smile at you until I did?! You’re – you’re **gorgeous**, I think at least someone would have-”

Mukuro’s heart nearly stops in her chest and she pulls away from Makoto, her face as red as a tomato. And it took a second or so for what Makoto said to sink in before he, himself, was flushing as deeply as she was and struggling with maintaining eye contact.

Mukuro kisses him forcefully before she even realizes what she was doing, and when she did she didn’t _ care _ how bad and inexperienced she was at it, or how he was about the same, she only knew-

A voice splits the air, way louder than is reasonable for midnight, and scares the ever-loving shit out of the pair. “DUDES! Anyone out here?!”

As soon as she hears Hiro’s yelling, she darts back from Makoto’s mouth, leaving him panting, confused, and a little afraid.

“Someone took my stash and I’m gonna find out who did it!”

Mukuro’s fist shakes in anger as she slowly moves the two of them out of his line of sight, careful not to make a single sound. She is half tempted to sneak behind him and knock him unconscious, but she knows very well that that would not go over well with Makoto nor the school faculty… so she simply waits for that idiot Hiro to move on, or at least move out of the way of the doors leading into the school.

Eventually the clairvoyant left, bored of yelling at the air. “We’re going to my room,” Mukuro whispers, and Naegi just nods and follows her.

–

Mukuro Ikusaba is barely seventeen when she finally tells Makoto about her former home life and why she had so much trouble believing him when he called her gorgeous, and when she finally gets through all of it, she feels like she’s shed a tremendous weight.

“...Your sister sounds like she was a terrible person,” Makoto says, his expression carefully neutral. “Fat, stupid, ugly… you’re none of those things!”

And although her natural instinct is to fight it and protect Junko’s name… the more she thinks about it, the more she thinks Makoto is right, and the more she becomes _ terrified _ of what she might have become had Junko lived. “You’re probably right,” she admits, tears forming at the corner of her eyes… which are swept up by the lucky boy instantly, warming her heart. “But even though I abandoned her… she… she still loved me. She still wanted me to come back.” At least, that’s what she tells herself.

Makoto says nothing, but his mood is noticeably dispirited for the rest of the day.

The next day, he comes straight to her room and brings her a hefty book – _ Emotionally Abusive Relationships _ – and the two of them thumb through it together.

The first time she reads a point that matches up exactly with something Junko did to her, she writes it off as a fluke.

By the fifth match, she is second guessing her take on the situation.

By the tenth, she’s certain that Junko was actually abusing her deliberately… but she keeps reading.

By the fifteenth, she feels a part of herself dying with every single new point.

By the thirtieth, she closes the book because she can’t read anymore through the tears. She’s openly sobbing and Makoto is holding her, stroking her hair, and wiping away every tear he sees.

They sit in silence for what feels like ages to the ex-mercenary, the only sound being her crying her heart out. Makoto finally breaks it. “Mukuro… I think you need to see a therapist.”

“Mmhm-” she murmurs into his chest automatically.

“No!” he snaps, forcefully, and Mukuro automatically pulls back, looking at him in confusion. “Don’t do it just because I told you to, **please**! I don’t want you to run through the motions with them only for nothing to get done. This isn’t about me.”

She hangs her head in shame; she hadn’t even considered therapy, indeed, and she had agreed mostly because he had brought the idea up. But the more she thinks of it, the more she thinks it might be a good idea… although she knows very well that it isn’t a cure-all, nor is it a guarantee that the therapy will help at all.

“Okay,” she says, but the hint of will in her voice is enough for Makoto to pick up on, and he smiles at her.

“Thank you,” he replies before clinging to her in a tight hug. “I love you, Mukuro.”

Even after nearly a year together it takes almost all of her willpower not to melt into a puddle of goo on the spot. 

–

Mukuro Ikusaba is twenty-three and settles into a comfortable life as a domestic military advisor for the JSDF, mostly because if she tried to go off on a military adventure Makoto would literally force her to let him come along and she had no intention whatsoever to let that happen. She has a question that she’s been wanting to ask for years now… and an expensive restaurant booking for today just so she can ask it.

When they arrive, Mukuro stares in shock at Makoto as she realizes this is the first time she’s seen him in a suit and marvels at just how much more mature he looks in one.

“...Do I have something on my shirt?” he asks.

“No,” Mukuro responds, and the two find themselves seated and order their food before too long. When the drinks are brought out, she muses on the topic for a second… “Makoto-”

“Shh,” he holds up a finger. “I’ve got something to ask you first.”

He reaches into his suit pocket and her heart nearly stops as she realizes that he was going to beat her to the very thing she brought him here for!

“Mukuro-” 

“Yes,” she states, tears flooding her vision, “I will!” she shouts, excitedly jumping to her feet to rush over to the other side to hug him – and inadvertently slamming the table from below with her knee, sending their drinks flying into several bystanders.

‘_Shit, I’ve ruined everything!’_ she mentally swears, but Makoto simply laughs and crushes her self-doubt under another one of his trademark warm smiles.

The security isn’t laughing, though, and they escort the pair out of the building post-haste.

“That was _amazing_,” Makoto says once they’re booted out of the door. “You made them all so mad _so fast_.”

“I brought you there to ask you the same question, because I didn’t know if you’d ever ask, and… you interrupted me.”

“Now you know my answer,” he snarks back. “Like I’d ever say no to you. Now I’ve got tell Komaru, and Toko will have to know because they’re getting married, and… actually, why don’t we just go to my parents’ place and announce it there?”

And despite inadvertently ruining their dinner and wasting a few hundred dollars, Mukuro can’t recall a time she was ever happier.


End file.
